Friday, March 28, 2014

A decade ago, I had the pleasure of
sitting down and speaking to Dr. Vicente Ximenes for the first time,
and although I had researched and read quite a bit about his
illustrious career, all of the words on the pages that I had read
paled in comparison to hearing about his life through his own words.
It was a life lived less ordinary.

As I heard Dr. Ximenes speak about his
past, I began to draw parallels to my own life, and that of my
family. He grew up in the small town of Floresville, Texas, and just
like each of my male relatives, he served in the armed forces
overseas. When he returned, the path that he took continued to be one
of service, and his actions would impact not only the Hispanic
veterans in my family, but those of millions of Americans who would
be granted equal treatment through the fulfillment of his legacy. His
life was a life of service, seeking equality and justice for all
Americans, regardless of their backgrounds, and his work with the
American GI forum did just that.

With all of his accolades and
accomplishments, education was a factor in Dr. Ximenes’s life that
seemed to be a focal point for all of the other successes that he
would have. The University of New Mexico became his home as he
pursued his bachelor and master degrees, becoming an accomplished
scholar in addition to a passionate civic leader. As a student at the
University of New Mexico myself, I was honored to be granted time
with such a remarkable man, and to hear about his life and
accomplishments. What was undoubtedly a short meeting has resonated
with me for years ever since.

I left inspired and motivated by the
words of Dr. Ximenes, and along with Dr. Michelle Hall Kells, we were
able to set up a scholarship at the University of New Mexico in Dr.
Ximenes’s name to not only commemorate the amazing work that he had
done, but to afford others the opportunity to have a similar impact
through education. It was fulfilling work to see the scholarship come
to fruition at dedication ceremony for Dr. Ximenes. The room was
packed full of people who were there to congratulate him, and to show
support for a man that had supported so many others. We gave out the
award to the first recipient on that day, but in the past decade, it
has helped so many others.

Moved by his message, my
post-collegiate years have been spent in service, much like those of
Dr. Ximenes. Knowing that access to a quality education is the civil
rights movement of our generation, I joined Teach For America after
graduation and moved to Texas to teach and support students who were
much like myself. I was able to work in underprivileged schools from
the bustling streets of Houston, to the dusty dirt roads of the Rio
Grande Valley. For almost a decade, I have had the pleasure of
working with teachers and students that are committed to ensuring
that every child, regardless of their background, has the opportunity
to attain an excellent education.

Although I was saddened to hear about
the death of Dr. Vicente Ximenes, being granted the opportunity to
hear about his life forever changed mine. He was a remarkable leader
and man that will truly be missed.

The
last time I spoke with Vincente Ximenes we talked about my hometown
of San Angelo, Texas. He recalled with nostalgic humor how the
Tejanos and Tejanas in West Texas were a bit stubborn and a bit set
in their ways. Ximenes followed this accurate critique by telling me
that those that did listen to the message of progress and equality
via Mexican American Civil Rights were some of the most dedicated and
most vocal activists he had ever met.

After
our conversation, I reflected on the importance of Ximenes’s work
to scholars such as myself. As a young woman raised and educated in
West Texas, I was a definitive homegrown scholar, as much a part of
my community as I was a part of academia. Through Ximenes’s stories
about my hometown, I began to acknowledge this and embrace it. What
an honor it was to come to this realization through Ximenes’s fond
memories of San Angelo and his time there as an activist and
organizer.

As
a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of New
Mexico, I am taking a path like the one forged by Ximenes on his
journey from Floresville, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico, I have
made my way west to cultivate the academic side of my role as citizen
scholar. My dissertation, titled “The Chicana Speaks: Dolores
Huerta and the Chicana as Rhetor,” is the cornerstone of this
journey. My dissertation
examines the role of Dolores Huerta as a paradigmatic Chicana rhetor.
Known as “La
Huelgista,” Huerta
has worked tirelessly for the last four decades in pursuit of Mexican
American labor and civil rights. Through her position as lobbyist and
speaker for multiple organizations and foundations, she has
accomplished the monumental feat of the Chicana voice from the oikos
into the polis.
I take as my primary texts for analysis Huerta’s own words, her
1969 Statement to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, a
1973 debate between Huerta and Chuck O’Brien of the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters, and her 2009 Commencement Keynote Address
at UCLA. Ultimately, I argue that the confluences of Huerta’s
upbringing, her critically progressive embodiment of Chicanisma, and
her adept rhetorical skills positions her as an efficacious Chicana
rhetor. My work is in honor of activists and speakers such as Huerta
and Ximenes and the profound impact they have made in American
Rhetoric. I believe that the time is upon us to begin cultivating
these voices as part of our canon.

As
Ximenes scholars, we all strive to move the work we are doing within
the confines of academia into the community. An example of this came
with the 2013 Writing the World Symposium, held at the University of
New Mexico on April 19th,
2013. As the 2013 Chair of UNM’s Writing Across Communities, I had
the pleasure of helping to organize this symposium with a cadre of
like-minded citizen scholars. This symposium brought together
academics, poets, tutors, students, and community members in forum on
issues concerning literacy practices in our dynamic and diverse
university and community. Vibrant and varied panels led to personal
and professional connections for presenters and attendees. From these
connections arose continuing conversations on how to best engage and
enact literacy practices that are local and vocal and effective to
our communities.

Vincente
Ximenes’s legacy of interweaving civic duties with scholarly
endeavors lives on through the Ximenes Scholarship and those, such as
myself, who have the honor of receiving it.

When
I heard of Dr. Vicente Ximenes’ passing and was subsequently asked to
write this memorial I was at first honored and then humbled. He meant
so much to the movement,
to my work as a scholar of color, to Albuquerque and to the Chicano
community. I have struggled to write this memorial because how do you
honor a man with such a legacy.

In
2012, when I received the Vicente Ximenes Scholarship in Public
Rhetoric and Civic Literacy I had the privilege of meeting Dr.
Ximenes. I related to him that as
a single mother and a Latina with limited funds, the money I received
meant the word to me but more than that with this scholarship I would
dedicate my work on several research projects with Ximenes’ legacy in
mind. The work he did was revolutionary and people
like me wouldn't be in doctoral programs without the things he did so
many years ago. It was and still is an act of defiance for people of
color to contribute to academia.

This
past weekend I attended the Conference on College Composition and
Communication where I presented a chapter of my dissertation titled Multilingual
Writers and the Ruling Voice: Constructions of Race, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the DREAM Act.
It was during the discussions that followed this presentation and the
meeting with the Latino Caucus that I realized how to
frame this memorial to Dr. Ximenes. We are still a misunderstood and
underrepresented people. We still need to mobilize. And so in death as
in life Dr. Ximenes is our abuelito. He is our voice and our passion
and as part of a community of Chicanos, Latinos,
and Indigenous gente he symbolizes the struggle. He will be missed
because of his work but also because he is part of a collective
conscious of Latinidad and Chicanismos. One soul has passed but the
struggle continues.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

The other afternoon, on my way across campus to conduct my
dissertation research, I happened to run into my mentor, Dr. Michelle
Hall Kells, heading home for the day. I had been working on the
webpage to honor Dr. Vicente Ximenes and the scholarship that bears
his name, and I had a question for Dr. Kells, whose current book
project examines Dr. Ximenes’ key role in Mexican American civil
rights reform. Over the years I had studied under her and worked
alongside her on UNM’s Writing Across Communities (WAC) Initiative,
I had often heard Kells refer to Ximenes as the cofounder of the
American GI Forum, but I had trouble finding that reference
elsewhere. When I mentioned that to her, Kells explained that Ximenes
had yet to receive the recognition he deserved, but that Ximenes
should be considered a cofounder of the American GI Forum for the
role he played in shaping the organization into one that would in
large part determine the outcome of the 1961 presidential election.
And it was Ximenes, Kells insisted, that had provided the blueprint
for the work we had been doing these past ten years at UNM under the
banner of the WAC Initiative.
I’ll leave it to the expert, Dr. Kells, to reveal the details of
Dr. Ximenes’ legacy, but the gist is this: The American GI Forum
was not much more than a small network of veterans and church groups
scattered across Texas when it came under the leadership of Dr.
Vicente Ximenes in 1951. At that time Dr. Ximenes was an
undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, but in collaboration
with other student-veterans, he was able to transform a loose-knit
and at that time largely campus-based initiative into a force that
united the southwestern Hispanic community under the banner of civil
rights reform. It was Ximenes’ aptitude as a citizen scholar—one
who navigates fluidly the often conflicting but always overlapping
spheres of academic, professional, and civic life—that forged his
path from leader of a student organization at UNM to advisor of the
President of the United States on Mexican American civil rights.
I am humbled to have received the honor of a Vicente Ximenes
Scholarship in Public Rhetoric and Community Literacy for my work
with WAC at UNM. The extent to which my organizing work has been
informed by Dr. Ximenes becomes more apparent as Dr. Kells shares
through her scholarship more and more of the blueprint inscribed in
Ximenes’ rhetorical legacy. Already I am indebted to Ximenes for
the concept of the citizen scholar, upon which my dissertation
research is based. My study, “Toward a Rhetorical Paideia of
Writing in/across/beyond the Disciplines: A Genre Ecology of Citizen
Scholarship in the School of Engineering,” follows engineering
students involved in a humanitarian project that requires they
navigate the often conflicting but always overlapping professional,
academic, and civic economies of writing that comprise that endeavor.
I hold that such an endeavor is in fact an instance of citizen
scholarship, and the cultivation of the citizen scholar the primary
objective of liberal education in the 21st century. What I want to know is how we can better
prepare students for participation in acts of citizen scholarship
that will inherently require them to write in, across, and beyond
disciplinary and cultural boundaries and ultimately define for
themselves what it means to be an active participant in the
democratic process. It is my hope that this research will inform the
way that inter/disciplinary capstone courses are designed and
implemented here at UNM and elsewhere, and thus how writing is taught
across the curriculum to prepare students for successfully completing
such capstone courses and achieving other goals in their professional
and civic lives. I know that the most effective teaching and most
impactful learning don’t occur in the classroom but in interactions
like the one I recalled above, within instances of citizen
scholarship wherein students and their teacher-mentors
collaboratively endeavor to effect real-world change, in this case,
in a way that honors the legacy of Dr. Vicente Ximenes. It is
therefore my hope that the impacts of my own citizen scholarship will
serve as one way in which Ximenes’ legacy will live on in the lives
of students here at UNM and elsewhere.

Monday, March 10, 2014

This week we honor the memory of Dr.
(Honorary) Vicente Ximenes' seventy-year legacy of public service to
advance education and civil rights in New Mexico, the United States,
and the world. Over the course of his long career of public service,
Vicente Ximenes was the exemplar of the citizen scholar who ethically
and effectively exercised authority and leadership across academic,
civic, and professional spheres. Dr. Ximenes passed away on Feb. 27,
2014 at the age of 94, after sixty years of affiliation with UNM
beginning in 1947.In 1951, Dr. Ximenes was the founder of the
American G.I. Forum in New Mexico, a national-level veterans' rights
group. Dr. Ximenes retired as an Air Force major and was awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal for combat duty in World War
II. He served in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson as
U.S. Commissioner of Equal Employment (1967-1972), Chairman of the
President’s Cabinet Committee on Mexican American Affairs
(1967-1969), and as Vice President for Field Operations for the
National Urban Coalition (1972-1973). Dr. Ximenes' unparalleled
contributions at the state and national-level distinguish him as one
of the most influential figures in US civil rights history. Few
leaders have had as far-reaching impact on the lives of the nation's
youth in terms of equal opportunity in business, educational, and
civic access. In New Mexico, Dr. Ximenes was the founder and chairman
of New Mexico Youth Conservation Corps Commission. President Jimmy
Carter appointed him Commissioner of White House Fellows (1977-1981),
and Dr. Ximenes also received the Common Cause Public Service
Achievement Award, Washington D.C. (1982) and the State of New Mexico
Distinguished Service Award (1981).Dr. Ximenes’ education and career were
deeply bound up with the University of New Mexico, having earned a BA
in Education (1951) and an MA in Economics (1953), and having served
as a research associate for the UNM Bureau of Business Research
(1951-1961). UNM awarded Vicente Ximenes an Honorary Doctorate in
Humane Letters in 2008.Later in life, through his collaboration
with Dr. Michelle Kells (UNM Department of English), Dr. Ximenes
served as an intellectual architect for the UNM Writing Across
Communities initiative, recognizing the need for leaders skilled in
rhetoric and writing to facilitate cultural, civic, educational, and
economic development in New Mexico. He founded the Vicente Ximenes
Scholarship in Public Rhetoric and Community Literacy to stimulate
research and knowledge in language and literacy that can be utilized
to improve human relations across social groups in the state. At
least six Ximenes Scholarships have been awarded, and four of those
recipients are currently finishing their doctoral dissertations. Dr.
Ximenes also served as keynote speaker for the 2007 UNM Civil Rights
Symposium, organized by Dr. Kells, who writes about his legacy in a
forthcoming book chapter “Vicente Ximenes and LBJ's Great Society:
The Rhetorical Imagination of the American GI Forum.”Michelle Kells notes, “Dr. Ximenes was my
guide, my guardian angel, my professional advisor and an intellectual
architect for Writing Across Communities at UNM. Trust me, the story
of Mexican American civil rights begins and ends with Vicente
Ximenes. The Chicano generation of the 1960s gave us no equal!
Scholars in History and Political Science see that now.” Vicente
Ximenes’ life and legacy demonstrate some of the best contributions
of our public flagship university: empowering young people from
diverse backgrounds through education, fostering their success in the
world, and
memorializing their contributions through research and scholarly
writing.A reception in honor of Dr. Vicente Ximenes
and his legacy in New Mexico and nationally will be held on Fri.,
March 28, from 3-4:30 p.m. at the Southwest Hispanic Research
Institute/Chicana Studies Building at 1829 Sigma Chi Road NE. For
further information, contact Dr. Michelle Hall Kells at
mkells@unm.edu.

As
much as we would like to believe that history demonstrates a constant
progression of humankind, many people continue to suffer as very
serious challenges have yet to be overcome. The Latino community is
far down the road from where it was in the 1950s, 60s, and even 70s
thanks to Dr. Vicente Ximenes and many others; but it also true that
the Latino high-school dropout rate is too high, that we work for the
lowest wages of any group in the United States, and that our
homeownership rate is 20 points under the national average. The
Latino level of savings and investment wealth is the lowest of any
ethnic group in the United States. The inequities continue and they
must be addressed.

If
we Latinos are going to make our full contribution to American
society we cannot do it without health insurance, without adequate
jobs, without completed educations, and without sufficient skills.
The task that lies before us is a major one that our civic activists
and our political leaders must commit to with the same courage, the
same vision, the same uncompromising spirit, the same relentlessness,
and the same sense of belief in America and an unwillingness to be
ground down as Dr. Ximenes and his contemporaries showed. That is
the task of our national leaders today.

Whatever
progress our leaders make along the traditional ladder of progress, I
hope they will always remember, as Dr. Ximenes and others have, their
roots and the people who were are still behind. Our narrative must
be more than a story of a few people making it to the top; rather it
must be a story of those few opening doors so that many others could
come behind them. That is the spirit of Dr. Ximenes and the spirit
future leaders should have, including many who are still in the
universities, high schools, and grade schools. This is a long-term
proposition—the building of a great nation and the sustenance of a
great people–and Dr. Ximenes certainly set the standard. It is up
to us to understand it and follow.

Dr.
Ximenes’ life was forged in the scrub brush of Floresville in South
Texas at a time when there was virulent discrimination against
Mexicanos despite the fact that Mexicanos had lived in that area of
Texas for hundreds of years. He worked hard within the system to
acquire the best education and skills, and, early in life, came to
the attention of very important figures like Lyndon Johnson who
recognized his political skills, his interpersonal skills, his
oratorical and communication skills and, very importantly in due
course, his managerial and national leadership potential. He held a
series of posts including positions at the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and at the State Department, and a
political position in the Viva Johnson effort in 1964. He eventually
ended up in a very key slot during the early formation of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, one of the major 1960s civil
rights era organizations, and then made important contributions as
the coordinator, secretary, and chair of the effort to create the
first cabinet-level position to bring Hispanic affairs to the
attention of the national government.

In
the 1960s and 70s organizations such as the American GI Forum and
LULAC defined a new level of Latino engagement with the larger
society. They engaged on a broad front: education, senior issues,
children’s concerns, disability programs, economic progress,
corporate board representation, discrimination—in short, the gamut
of life for Latinos in America. Much of the energy for establishing
these organizations came out of that period and Dr. Ximenes not only
encouraged but facilitated the conditions in which these
organizations could prosper. At this point Latinos had capable
leaders backed by foundations, churches, and labor organizations and
sustained by their own sweat equity and recognition of the need to
advocate on behalf of our community. So what started in the earlier
era with individuals like Dr. Hector Garcia and like Dr. Ximenes
ended up later being an army of activists who could change things
dramatically—and have. Today we have some 45 national Latino
organizations under the roof of the National Hispanic Leadership
Agenda. They meet together to focus on what is important to the
44-plus million Latinos across the United States who are of diverse
origins: Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Central American,
and South American.

It
is difficult today to comprehend the levels of discrimination and the
intensity of challenges which Dr. Ximenes had overcome: patronizing
attitudes and the subordination of Mexican Americans in Texas. In
some communities in South Texas, Latino veterans could not be buried
in the same cemeteries as other veterans who died fighting for our
country. Across Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado Latinos were often
denied the most basic of rights: the rights to go into public
facilities, the rights to vote without a poll tax, the rights to have
access to jobs that matched their skills and capabilities. That is
the world through which Dr. Ximenes fought his way. When finally the
tide began to turn, he was recognized as a figure who could bridge
the gap between disenfranchised Mexican Americans and the political
and power institutions of our society.

One
of the decisive turning points in the struggle was the 1967 El Paso
hearings which Dr. Ximenes organized and chaired and which was the
first time the government of the United States explicitly created a
forum in which Latino grievances and longstanding concerns could be
addressed. One of the most significant things about it was the fact
that it had the support and endorsement of the President of the
United States. We were fortunate to have a President who not only
understood civil rights and basic fairness and who fought for the
disadvantaged people with whom he grew up—depression-era poor
people from Central Texas—but who broadened his understanding to
include African Americans and Latinos. President Lyndon B. Johnson
never forgot his experiences as a teacher of young Latino children in
Cotulla in South Texas! The civil rights movement touched his
conscience. Latinos had never been included in the narrative of what
was unfair about America and what needed to be changed about America
until President Johnson and those 1967 hearings. They were seminally
important and the beginning of a massive turnaround in thinking.

Another
critical piece of context is the African American civil rights
movement. Dr. King’s leadership of the Montgomery bus boycotts and
organization of a national movement, the new commitments which
followed in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1962,
President Johnson’s pushing of civil rights and breaking the
legislative logjams created by those who were opposed through the use
of the filibuster and other legislative techniques available to
them—all played a part in the lead-up to the Civil Rights Act, the
Voting Rights Act, the formation of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Also enacted were new commitments student financial aid, fair labor
practices, fair housing, and other measures that touched the lives of
all Americans, reaching far beyond one group. The Civil Rights
Movement created parallel paths within the Latino community, the
women’s movement, the environmental agenda, and the quest to aid
persons with disabilities. Basically, as Dr. King said, when we open
the doors of opportunity, they are opened for everyone. That is
exactly one of the most powerful changes which has occurred in our
country over the last 50 years. America has been transformed from a
society which was unjust, exclusive, overtly discriminatory and
segregationist to an inclusive society which though not perfect is
clearly more fair and open. Dr. Ximenes was a contributor to that
breakthrough period, faithful to those principles, recognized for his
skills, and one of our civil rights pioneers.

In
the wake of that period, national organizations were founded which
have changed life for Latinos, such as the National Council of La
Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the
Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project—each of which
have touched countless lives. Who could have imagined then that
those institutions would so effectively alter the trajectory of
Latino integration into American society? Young
leaders modeled their activism on those who came before, including
men such as Dr. Hector Garcia of Corpus Christi, Congressman Henry B.
Gonzales of San Antonio, Senators Joe Montoya and Dennis Chavez of
New Mexico, and Edward Roybal, the first Latino City Council member
in Los Angeles and later Congressman. These were giants and Dr.
Ximenes was one of them. He is a key figure in the tremendously
important evolution of Latino progress in the United States. I have
faith that subsequent generations will continue the momentum; perhaps
not in the same ways, perhaps not fighting overt discrimination or
manifesting the physical courage that Dr. Ximenes and his
contemporaries needed to show, but acting upon a vision appropriate
to the times. Hopefully the next generation will complete the job of
taking Latinos into the mainstream of American life.

The
Latino progression is one of the most important dynamic forces in the
United States. There are major trends which we can see will shape
our country—globalization, the continuing evolution of technology,
the aging of the population, the migration of populations across
America. Certainly one which will be among the most decisive is the
Hispanicization of the United States. That is not to suggest the US
is going to be a majority Hispanic country, but it is clear that one
of the most important demographic realities in the American future
will be the energy, the youthfulness, the capacity for hard work, and
the ambition that the American Latino community brings to the United
States. This is massively important to the American future. A drive
by a schoolyard today in almost any major American city reveals a
population of children playing in the schoolyard that reflects the
shape of the American future captured in the many faces of minority
children. Many of those children are Latino, not just in New Mexico,
Texas or California; not just in Arizona, Colorado or Florida, but in
Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Illinois, New York, and
Washington State. All across America as this process unfolds Latinos
will take our place among the shapers of America’s destiny.
Because we love this country, we want to work for it and make it
greater. As we do, let us remember the pioneers, the visionaries,
the courageous few, those who were unwilling to settle for lives of
discrimination and segregation, and who used their skills for the
benefit of a people and a nation. Dr. Ximenes is foremost among
those who have worked to create the better life that we enjoy today.

In 2012 I received an award of
which I am enormously proud, the Vicente Ximenes Scholarship in
Public Rhetoric and Civic Literacy. I received it largely for work I
had done over the previous four years in UNM’s Writing Across
Communities initiative, and I saw it both as a validation and a spur
to work harder and more seriously towards my goal of being a citizen
scholar. I felt this way because Dr. Ximenes was such an accomplished
citizen scholar himself, and if my name was to associated with his I
had much to live up to. That was only two years ago, so I am still a
long way from my goal, but I am working at it. With Writing Across
Communities I led two Civil Rights Symposia and served as secretary
of UNM’s Core Curriculum Task Force, which led to an appointment as
senior writing fellow for the Dean of Arts & Science’s Writing
Intensive Learning Communities Pilot Project. Beyond these endeavors
I served for one year as a writing tutor for American Indian Student
Services, and for two years as Assistant Director of Core Writing in
UNM’s English department. I am a recipient of the Office of
Graduate Studies’ Future Faculty Award, the Susan Deese-Roberts
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, and a year-long fellowship from
the Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Foundation, under which I am
currently completing a dissertation on the environmental activist
Aldo Leopold, which I will defend this Fall.

For me,
Dr. Ximenes’s accomplishments provide a kind of model – not in
precisely what he did, because I know we all have our own
contributions to make, but in how he lived out his principles. He
dedicated himself to helping people at the economic fringes of
society speak for themselves and live with dignity. He understood
that civic action requires an understanding of people’s daily lives
and how they are affected by their relationships with their
government, their jobs, and their families. I try to remain mindful
of these principles in the way I conduct myself as a scholar,
teacher, and colleague. In my dissertation, I argue that Aldo
Leopold’s life and work are most useful to us when viewed through
the lens of what I am calling “citizen ecology.” A citizen
ecology represents the full range of activities an individual brings
to bear on living conscientiously within a polity. Drawing on green
citizenship, publics theory, ecofeminism, theories of rhetorical
silencing, and genre theory, my dissertation explores Leopold’s
large archive to show how citizenship is enacted at the intersection
of the public and private spheres; how Leopold’s activism in the
Southwest tragically exploited and silenced Apache, Navajo, and
Pueblo peoples; and how he used different genres to speak for
non-human nature in the democratic process. The dissertation
concludes by arguing that both citizenship and environmental rhetoric
are most useful to scholars and activists when understood as forms of
practical judgment that shape and respond to complex problems.

Dr. Ximenes’s living out of
his principles also informs my teaching. In Writing Across
Communities we talk about teaching three kinds of literacy to our
students: civic, academic, and professional. With these fluencies
students will be well positioned to move purposefully in the world in
and beyond our classrooms, and to see the connections between their
political lives, their academic lives, and their professional lives,
as Dr. Ximenes did so clearly. We also talk about honoring the
fluencies students bring to our classrooms, and about making clear to
students that their new literacies are additions to rather
than replacements of the ones they developed before we met
them. Dr. Ximenes used his position to amplify the voices of people
who might otherwise not have been heard. In similar if more modest
ways, I try to help students amplify their own voices with new
fluencies, new literacies, while honoring the ones they bring from
their homes and adopted communities. Dr. Ximenes will continue to
effect positive change while being greatly missed.

XIMENES, VICENTE TREVINO "CHENTE" Vicente Trevino Ximenes, and in family
circles known as Chente, passed away on February 27 and has joined his
lifelong love Maria; son Estevan; sister Hercilia Toscano; and brothers
Ben, Edward and Waldo. Vicente would say in moments of reflection, how
his path through life was started in a small town in Floresville, Texas,
serving his country on the world stage, being a voice for justice and
equality for all people, returning to serve his State of New Mexico, his
city of Albuquerque, his neighborhood and finally his beloved community
at La Vida Llena. Woven throughout his service and accomplishments was
his steadfast support and love of his "familia," his son, Ricardo
Ximenes and wife, Patricia; daughters Olivia and husband, Patrick
Harrington, and Ana Maria and husband, Steve Baroch; daughter-in-law
Patty Snipes; granddaughter Theresa Ximenes; our great granddaughters
Chloe and Madison Ximenes-Merrill; brother Joe Ximenes; sister Magdalena
Valdez; sister in law Mary-Lou Ximenes, and all our familia in San
Antonio and Floresville, Texas, which is lovingly and happily large. Our
father's beautiful life story includes many special friends, so please
consider this a personal note of thanks and gratitude for being a part
of his life and sharing his adventure. As a family, we thank Mando and
Jackie Lopez for the circle of love that you wrapped around our family.
To our cousin Linda Ximenes: Chente loved your visits. To everyone who
shared Vicente's journey, like the Mexican corridas, that told the
history of a country and the lives of its people, you are a part of his
song and forever in our "canciones de nuestro padre" (songs of our
father). A Rosary Service will be held Thursday, March 6, 2014 at
6:00p.m. at FRENCH - Lomas. A Graveside Service will be held Friday
March 7, 2014 at 2:30 p.m. at Mt. Calvary Cemetary, 1900 Edith NE,
87102. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Vicente
Ximenes Scholarship Fund in care of Michelle Hall Kells, University of
New Mexico, Department of English, MSC 032107, Albuquerque, NM 87131.
Please visit our online guestbook for Vicente at www.FrenchFunerals.com FRENCH - Lomas 10500 Lomas Blvd. NE (505) 275-3500